


The Other Woman

by infradead



Category: Far Cry (Video Games), Far Cry 5
Genre: Age Difference, Coercion, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Enemies to Lovers, Eventual Smut, F/M, Older Man/Younger Woman, Polyamory, Slow Burn, Threats of Violence, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-21
Updated: 2018-08-27
Packaged: 2019-06-19 06:09:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15504015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infradead/pseuds/infradead
Summary: Shelled like this dusty no man’s land of battlefield smoke and spent bullet casings, reminiscent of a time imperceptible. Not long ago. Yet it is ever present, persistent, a war that follows you home, hasn’t been properly put to rest yet and roams bitter still.You’ve chased those demons away long ago.





	1. Chapter 1

His boots leave deep imprints in the soil.

They’re still deposited there in that blood-caked dirt, an inch away from the bars that otherwise house and form this barbarous maze of cages he’s methodically constructed. You know they’re his. No one else stands that close to them when you’re knocked out cold, huddled to secure body warmth against the freezing nights in your sleep. 

No one else besides him ever comes to visit, to ponder, to study you much like a zoologist observes a captive animal pacing in its cage. But you’ve become attuned to when he will, transfixed like clockwork.

His boots leave imprints because he perceives, takes mental notes, hypothesizes. Not in any perfect way of the scientific method that you’re familiar with, no physical notetaking or visual comparisons necessary to him, but to what he believes is standard and official to his books. It’s dangerous. It’s _reckless_. A part of you feels that the reminder is unwarranted.

The imprints are either elevens or twelves--maybe even thirteens. A little above average for someone of his height, but prominent and distinguishable nonetheless.

He thinks you haven’t been watching him, hypothesizing on him, drilling into that gray matter of your delirious haze right back.

And who is _he?_

“Jacob’s coming,” someone whispers. 

The cellmate adjacent to you shivers, sitting up at attention.

You know he is. You know because the guard keeping watch over the prisoners always leaves at midday for shift changes. You know which direction he prefers to exit from, which tattooed peggy comes to take his throne. At the beginning, you’d always been stirred awake from your dirt nap because _he_ would be seated right outside your cell, always an inch apart from the bars, simply observing. As if fascinated by your thinning body, your brain’s devouring of your muscles and tissue from the inside out.

Those mud-caked, laced-up boots align perfectly with the depression in the earth, his frame casting an elongated shadow. No inch was generously spared upon the man and his stature.

“Up already?” comes that deep, almost ravenous and husky voice from between the bars. “Didn’t wake ya, did I?”

He acts as if your living conditions are sweeter than his words let on--dirt, dirt, and nothing but dirt aside from the questionable rancid stench permeating the occasional wet spots of the soil.

You play along--it’s all you can do. Learn to adapt, to roll with each of his punches in quick succession, even if it may end with you dirt-napping facedown somewhere else on this map. Maybe he already knows you’re conspiring a way out, a sympathetic inside man with the promise of you saving his own skin as long as he fulfills his end of the bargain. A well-coordinated tactical strike on this hell-scape to flatten it into an utter wasteland. Not like it hasn’t been on its way turning into one.

Shelled like this dusty no man’s land of battlefield smoke and spent bullet casings, reminiscent of a time imperceptible. Not long ago. Yet it is ever present, persistent, a war that follows you home, hasn’t been properly put to rest yet and roams bitter still.

You’ve chased those demons away long ago. 

Others evidently haven’t.

“Does it matter?” you finally answer him.

Because it doesn’t; it never has. Jacob _chooses_ to play the courteous captor. The corner of his lips twists into something that almost resembles fondness, hugged by a wisp of auburn mustache. The strong urge to wash your hands and shower becomes prominent the longer you stare at his dirt-stained skin. But he needs a trim. Badly.

His head shakes softly, chin almost touching his chest as he glances away. “No. No, not really. But maybe…” He tilts his head upright, those cool eyes framed by light lashes. “Maybe you’re asking the wrong questions, Deputy.”

“What should I be asking then?” Fixated on how still he is, still an inch apart from the bars. “Can I leave now?”

A chuckle rumbles deep in a chest you imagined to be empty, hollow, a man that is more meat than he is bone. You’d hate to go toe-to-toe with him in a real fight, and for once he does something unfamiliar to these past visits.

He leans in just a breath closer, breaching that threshold, a single bar in his grasp as he flashes you a row of teeth. “That’s what I like to hear.”

But far from the right answer.

You want to kill him on the spot with your bare hands, but your fingers won’t even be able to wrap around his neck. Or even reach it at all, for that matter.

**Don’t.**

“What do you want?”

He regards you with curiosity. _Doing better_.

“You’ve been holding out on me, Dep.” 

He projects it in a way that sounds almost admonishing. Tiring. _Disappointed._ Like the unearthing of a scandalous secret that’s been successively buried for so long only to be uncovered years later. Used as a form of blackmail meant to be circumvented in the first place.

**Yes you have.**

You frown at him. “I don’t know what you mean.”

**Liar. This is why we’re here, this is why--**

“Of course, you don’t,” Jacob responds, fingers falling away as he takes a step back into the proper threshold you’ve fabricated.

**Of course, you don’t.**

“Today’s your lucky day.” Those rough fingers have every capability of doing humanity’s worst. Yet the way Jacob traces the lock against your cell is almost tender, careful. “There’s only a few questions I need to ask you. Not here, not like this. Figured you’d be more… _forthcoming_ elsewhere. You can thank your fellow officer for bringing this to my attention.”

Fucking Pratt. You don’t see him lingering around this time, tailing at least a generous ten feet behind the walking apocalypse like some empty casted shadow. Those boot imprints are a size too big for him to properly fill.

You wonder what he’d squeaked about you. How much pressure Jacob even had to apply to get it out of him. If Pratt had to even be pressed for it at all.

**You should be more worried about how he’s doing, you cunt.**

A migraine twists mercilessly at your skull, wincing away from the giant at the doorstep to your kingdom. “I guess it really must be lucky.”

He smiles again, and you both resent it and feel _appeased_ by it as he goes to wander off the way he’d came. No music box in sight, no herds that need culling. It feels almost... _unnerving_ even. Why would you expect it? He’d been conditioning you after all, tempering and honing you each time, like a dull blade against a whetstone. 

**I don’t expect it. I _want_ it.**

That migraine only grows worse.

Tapping against the bars to your right is another prisoner, who had been watching the entire exchange, leaning against the bars with practiced, casual diligence.

“Hey, Orest,” you mutter once Jacob’s out of ear-shot. Just because the man’s a wolf lover doesn’t mean he has ears like one. “Bet that was something to see.”

He lets out a quiet whistle. “It was. You’re his favorite. Everyone can see it.”

“He wants me to kill Eli,” you murmur back. “He wants me to pull the trigger.”

**I will. Only me, because you can’t. You’re not strong enough.**

“You’re _fucking_ with me,” goes Orest.

**Not pretty enough to.**

It has to be almost a week. Nearing one. You can feel your stomach rumbling, aching, churning in discomfort only known through a period of hunger. It’ll lead into starvation soon, but he always just barely reaches that threshold, hanging you over the teetering edge to see if you’ll fall. He loves to see that cusp, that turning point where it almost comes to break.

No one’s been fed yet, no one’s had a drop of water to drink, at least by Jacob’s will. You’ve seen someone across these multitude of bars and cages scooping questionable, unfiltered water from a shallow indentation in the ground, probably from the heel of someone’s boot. Slurping at it, needing _something_ cool down his throat. The utter relief of it quenching him. It could’ve been someone’s piss for all you know, but even you felt some sense of reprieve, liberation for his common struggle among you.

You never saw him again the next time you awoke to Jacob’s mud-caked boots at your doorstep, music box in hand.

**It was me. Because he deserved it.**

Orest is tapping a finger at the bars again, getting your attention.

“I’m gonna get some sleep,” he says, meeting your eyes. 

A confirmation that conveys more than just reassurance. His fingers tap the dirt where the bars are welded and scoots backwards into the furthest corner of his cell, cleaner and with shade. He’s an orderly prison mate. Like a trained domestic dog, pissing in one corner while tidying the other. He would’ve made a good assistant overseas back at Fiddler’s Green.

You draw your knees into your chest, glancing downwards where Orest’s fingers had been moments ago. A sliver of improvised metal jury-rigged with what one can scrape together when locked in captivity. It leans near the green tarp, camouflaged against the chipped paint as your cheek presses against a jean-stained knee.

You wait for the tattooed peggy to change shifts again, turning away.

 

 

It takes fifteen minutes for the next shift change. The tattooed peggy always leaves before the other one can take his place. You give yourself five minutes to wriggle that improvised lockpick through the door, guided by Orest and another cellmate across of which way to turn it. 

At four minutes of sweating hands and nearly dropping it from your shaking fingers, it gives in.

**What are you doing? What are you thinking?**

Orest hisses out his approval, jamming the lockpick into his own and jiggling at it. “Go! Run while you can, I’ll get the others out!”

Your own boots sink in where those ridiculously oversized ones still remain, bolting past the rows of other rousing prisoners. The cool night has yet to roll in--sweat collects at the center of your back, down your neck as you’re left stewing in a ripe, days-old uniform that needs to see a wash. The watch is vacant just as you and Orest suspected.

You give yourself another five minutes.

**Stop it!**

Knives are entrenched into the tabletop at the guard’s watch. One you tuck into the lace of your boot wrapped around your ankle, the other poised. Your breath trembles against the dim sky, limbs aching, hunger churning. You’re already thinking of what to do by the time you leave--a big fucking burger with fries and a drink. Something. _Anything_.

In ten minutes the security will be tightened even further, exits blocked, spotlights active. The front courtyard is too dangerous, clogged with one hunter too many. Perimeter’s too tall to climb, not for your stature. 

A vehicle? Maybe…

The roof? You just might be able to overshoot the high walls.

Either option, to your dismay, requires you to enter the veterans center, Orest’s plan returning in your fleeting mind when he’d first arrived here.

_There’s a key ring on the first floor. For the marked vehicles. They do their paperwork around here._

And maybe if you can find a key while you’re at it…

**Enough!**

Fuck it.

You scurry through a side entrance, slipping through the poorly lit corridors. Heart hammering with all its might, eyes hazy in the low-light vision. Footsteps echo a floor above, murmurs and an eerie silence you can’t equate to in your screaming mind. Pressed to the walls, staying low, trying to even your breaths as you wait for shadows to pass along the halls that preach _hunt, kill, train, sacrifice._

A horde of keyrings hang off the far end of the hall, like bleeding slaughter on a meat hook. Tantalizing you, tempting the sharks of this ocean. Blood in the water.

The windows are boarded, wire mesh and nailed with wooden beams, as if the presence of light is utterly unwanted here. As if those sunbeams cannot reach the depths of this hell, unfathomable to the dark recesses of this abyss.

The last person you expect to barrel into just as you reach those hooks nearly runs you over, keys fumbling and jangling from your hands and clattering like hail in a storm to the floorboards.

**I told you, I told you--**

“ _Pratt?_ ” you seethe between your teeth, blade handle squeezing against your flesh.

**Oh, he’s cute when he’s scared.**

You’re the last thing he expects, too, if his confused, startled expression is anything to go by. But it changes in just the snap of a finger--he suddenly appears possessed, _freaked_ that you aren’t in the safest place for you to be, his hands suddenly gripping harshly at your upper arms, your knife clattering to the floor alongside the keys.

“What are you _doing_ out here?” He says it like his lungs have been punctured, easing out all that air like he’s some helium balloon. “This isn’t safe, _you’re_ not safe, he’s--” His bruised eye widens. “He’ll know, I can keep you safe, listen to me--"

“Let me _go!_ ”

“Rook!”

A well-placed stomp against his toes, a knee between his legs is enough to get his hold on you to give, your palms shoving against his chest with all the force you can muster. _I’m sorry. I’m sorry it has to be like this but you’re just another obstacle in the way._ It takes all of your weight to get the taller man to properly stumble flat on his ass, his expression still one of abandoned horror and gasping breaths in the dusty motes of cracked light.

You don’t think, you only run, sweeping up a handful of keys as you pivot and rush to the other end of the hall where the double doors are.

**Left. Left!**

Blurring visions and adrenaline-fueled, you look to the left, seeing nothing.

A hard, solid mass of arm swings in from your right, clocking you straight into the floor on your back.

That tempting, girlish laugh in the back of your mind leaves you dazed, ears ringing against the flickering lights. The sound of heavy boots as your shocked body twitches to life, wheezing air into your lungs like this popped rubber cartoon tire. Watching the silhouette of a dark mass enter your clearing vision, gazing down upon you with those pale blue eyes.

You see his dried, mud-flaked boots and turn on your stomach, scrambling away just as he grabs for your forearm.

**Keep fighting it. Do it.**

**He likes me better. His good girl.**

His hands are enormous, wrapped around your arm like a child’s plastic doll. And in that dimmed hope you thin out your options where you can, struggling, shrieking, digging the heels of your boots into his body. Pulling the knife free where it’s wedged by your bootlaces, aiming for his neck’s artery just as his fingers wrap around your throat and shove you with teeth-clattering force into the wall behind you.

Something on the wall shivers, trembles, then crashes to the floor as he not only has you choked against it but has you _lifted_ , too.

You can feel that much-needed air slipping down your squeezed windpipe, nails clawing into that meaty, scarred wrist. Boots scraping uselessly against the curling wallpaper, tears springing into your eyes as you see black little dots clouding your vision of him and his patterned jacket.

**Harder.**

_Disgusting._

Jacob finally sets you free without ceremony when your body can fight no longer, when your kicking has slowed to a drag as your body collapses into a heap on the floor before him. Your frail, shaking fingertips touching gingerly where that bruising handprint will appear. Mark you forever as you choke on another dry spell.

“You’re ahead of schedule, Deputy.” He sounds completely unbothered, studying you like he always does. Pratt’s boots entering your blurry, mottled vision. “I want a security report, peaches. Get goin’.”

He nods, leaves wordlessly like this kicked puppy scampering off.

The way Jacob grasps a hold of your shirt is almost with rough tenderness. How he leads you down through the halls of the veterans center, periwinkle television lights flickering on and off against the opened doors. Droning, buzzing sounds of music, radio frequencies, shows. 

Upstairs, in a marked room where a lone table sits are files stacked in its center. Boarded windows with wire mesh. Two chairs that don’t match with the rest of the decor. They’re positioned in such a way that isn’t meant for two people to have dinner, poised directly in front of each other, the table simply meant as an armrest.

Jacob drops you into your seat hard with a hand on your shoulder to press you down, locking the door behind him.

He sits in front of you, sighing out as he observes again. That far-gone look as you stare, fixated on the dilapidated paint curling inwards and peeling from the wall over his shoulder. The warm bruise blossoming pulsing pain against your throat. The dark discoloration already blooming there, blood vessels broken. How you have to clear your throat every other moment if you want to breathe again.

He mentions nothing on your attempted escape, reaching over for the files like everything is going according to schedule.

“Your buddy Pratt mentioned something useful. Something that might have just gotten you out of the cells.”

You remain silent, leaning forward a little on your rickety seat. Leaning back too far strains your throat.

Those thick fingers flip languidly open a file on the table’s surface, listing off its contents.

“Medical Corps, huh? Should’ve figured you’d been trouble from the start. Only a surgeon could have picked her way out of those locks.”

You don’t know how he got a hold of those files. Maybe his little brother has friends in high places. You wouldn’t doubt it for a second.

A part of you feels like Jacob knows he would be lined up and shot for treating you like he has been. But he doesn’t appear apologetic, waiting for your confirmation.

Your voice cracks. “Navy. Provided medical support to the USMC. 4th Medical.”

“See any action?”

“Not much. Hard to see any working behind four walls.”

Not like him. Not like what he’s seen, done, has brought home with him. Some things are better left behind. Not to him. Everything up to this point has been cultivated, spared no expense at the cost of his own sanity.

You want this old skeleton gone and back in its closet.

Jacob knows it, too. Can already tell the way you’re a sweating mess, in dire need of basic hygiene again. He leans forward in his seat, and you have no choice in the matter. Those marksman’s eyes have seen it all. Up close, through a scope. Crosshairs aligned. Like you and your surgeon hands, there’s something accurately precise he’s good in, too.

You sew people back together. He picks them apart by the seams.

“I’m enlisting your expertise, doc. I expect your full cooperation during it. Faith and her chemists can’t figure out a compound, an improved formula on the Bliss. And I need a more efficient dosage for Grand View.”

He wants you to kill again. Not like that raw, putrid way as he does in these free-for-alls, but for you to be conscious during it. No conditioning required. He wants _you_ , not _her_. Intelligence, not raw power.

**Bitch.**

You bark out a soft laugh. Disbelief. Teary. “I can’t do that for you. You expect me to kill for you, go back on my oath. I can’t do that.”

You hear the click of the hammer. Slow as it taps against the gunmetal. A bullet waiting in the chamber. The cool touch of it kissing beneath your chin, poised at the center of your mandible. It’ll blow right through your brain, that gray matter, splattering the walls a gooey, sticky pink. Scrape it off like bubblegum stuck to the bottom of a shoe.

Jacob’s finger rests gently against the scarlet-painted trigger. Eyes expecting, encouraging, uncannily soft for what he’s about to do to you. Like he doesn’t _want_ to do this--like he _has_ to. To make you stronger, to save you from the weakness spreading within yourself like this rotten disease.

“Yes, you can,” he almost whispers in the small room. 

He’s a giant living among these walls. Unblinking, focused, watching tears sprout into the corner of your eyes. They sting as you’re reminded of that cool barrel. One of the tears slips through a dirty cheek, your lips holding together as you try not to let that gasping weep escape.

He shushes you, comforts you despite him being the instigator. “You’re capable. Even after everything you’ve done, I’ve made you stronger. But right now, who you are… you’re weak. The tough choices are out of your hands.”

What does he mean? There’s no music box, no desire to turn you into that non-discriminatory serial killer he’s fashioned, hardwired into your brain. That physical, grotesque _strength_ that comes forth. Blurry memories waking up in blood-soaked rags, his almost fond stroke of your cheek.

“You think you’re saving people,” he continues, voice calming. “You’re not. Not like this. The more you struggle, the worse this all becomes. People are dying because of _you_ for being selfish, doc.”

You saved people by removing their ailments, forwarded them to therapy personnel that you aren’t properly trained for. You don’t know the full extent of what he’s seen during the Gulf War. But things were certainly different then than when you were on active duty.

Another tear streaks down, and the last thing you expect is for Jacob’s other hand to come cupping at your cheek. A large thumb strokes against the wetness there, wiping it away with a tenderness inconceivable of him. Unrealistic. Yet he is, and a sob slips out, your shoulders trembling with the force.

“I need you to be strong right now,” he urges you, palm warm. Like he doesn’t have a fucking handgun aimed right at you. “Can you do that for me?”

You nod. Both in agreement for his offers, if it means your cooperation will mitigate any forthcoming punishment.

The affirmation isn’t enough, is it? Even when he sits back a little, pistol in his lap and poised directly at you still. He pulls that smooth, wooden musical box from his jacket pocket, setting it beside the papers of your service. In a moment he can turn you into his tiny little dancer, the ballerina spinning in infinite pirouette to accompany his song.

You don’t want to be. Not _her_ , not that ugly, dreadful side of you that he seems pleased to flesh out in seconds. The one that will do his bidding at the first command, who doesn’t question his methods because it was _only ever you_.

“Now,” he begins, wiping his thumb on his jeans. “About this little… fiasco we find ourselves in. You didn’t really think I would let it go, would you, doc? There are always consequences. Just as one soldier fucks up, the whole unit has to pay for it. You know what that’s like, don’t you?”

You visibly flinch but stand your ground, staring at the rabbit’s foot swinging gently on his chest. _I’m lucky. I’m so lucky, I shouldn’t be so lucky. It’s my lucky day._

Someone jiggles at the doorknob, a key being jammed to unlock it. Someone’s in a hurry. You wince again when the sound is too loud, the migraine even louder as multiple figures shift into the too small room, your eyes meeting the ones being dragged and forced down on their knees.

Moisture collects at your tear ducts, but you don’t cry. Not in front of Jacob again.

Pratt stands at the doorway, balancing his weight from foot to foot. Wringing his hands together, gazing momentarily at you with a guilt that outmatches your own. Orest is kneeled at the center, the other prisoner across from your cell to his left, the guard who was supposed to be on his shift to the right.

“Get out,” Jacob orders Pratt, who is all too quick to eagerly leave, shutting the door quietly behind him.

**Why didn’t you listen to me?**

Thick fingers guide you to stand upright from your chair. Jacob’s soft breath skittering down the nape of your neck as he towers above you, his boots mere inches from the heel of yours. In this tiny room everyone feels too close to each other, heaving, breathing, regretting.

Meeting Orest’s gaze hurts, twists barbs of discomfort in your pounding heart. Blood rushing into your ears as Jacob speaks again.

“One soldier fucks up,” he reminds you, taking your hand with strange affection, fitting the grip of his pistol into it. “The rest of the unit pays.”

You don’t care if those fresh tears break. You’ve had patients expire beneath your fingertips in the middle of difficult operations. Soldiers and civilians alike. This isn’t fair, this is uncalled for. Orest isn’t a soldier. He’s just an engineer who cared enough to speak up when no one else did against this fucking cult. Got caught in the wrong place, the wrong time. Kept you awake at night when it was too cold to sleep, murmuring and trading stories to each other in the starlight.

His hands are bound behind him, face bruised, yet he is willing. Eyeing that brilliant red paint of the pistol hanging limply at your side, Jacob hovering behind you.

Your voice sounds so foreign, choked, teary again, shaking your head. “No, _no_ \--”

“You told me you were stronger, doc. Show me.”

**Pussy.**

“They all have to pay,” Jacob reasons, goading you, the devil over your shoulder. “It’s up to you in which order they do. This is your chance to play God.”

You can save lives in more than just one way. And maybe this is the way that’s the simplest, painless in the long run. Maybe Orest and your other cellmate can see that clarity, too. 

They’ll turn into squishy meat. Mutilated and grinded down into the basic, blobby form of their flesh. Packed away and carted off like a slaughterhouse assembly line. You can smell that stench of familiar raw meat and almost dry heave.

You raise the gun, iron sights locked in on the guard first. Maybe he’ll make the first kill the easiest. Is it because you don’t know him? Because he deserves it? Because his face is shrouded in a balaclava, so you won’t remember his face? Why is this such a familiar game of _what’s behind door number three?_

The iron sights quiver, quaking from your sweaty palm. Pull it. It’s only one trigger.

You can’t.

Just as you go to drop your aim, Jacob is there at your back. Shushing you again, reaching forward to clamp your jaw with that massive hand. Steering your gaze back over to the guard, _one of his_ , to remind you that there are always sacrifices to be made. Three lives in exchange for yours.

His scarred arms come into view, bracing your hold firm against the grip again. His fingers guiding you, aiding you through this transition. The side of his cheek light against the crown of your head, his enormous hands steadying your aim, but it’s your finger on the trigger. You feel clouded, hazy, overpowered with his immense form engulfing you, his chest and soft belly pressed against your back through that thin shirt.

Blood hits the chipped paint of the wall like a kid’s playroom with wet paint. A body rolling over, falling forward as gunpowder and smoke choke the air. A single casing clatters and rolls against the wooden floorboards.

Another casing joins it, the prisoner to Orest’s left slumping back, a hole the size of a bullet through his chest. You almost forget that Jacob is a marksman at times. Feeling that recoil shivering down your bones, kicking you back into the enormous man behind you keeping you steady.

Orest winces but doesn’t plead for his life. Not when Jacob’s hands slide away, tracing up your forearms to rest on your shoulders.

“You should’ve just ran,” Orest reminds you.

You pull the trigger, ears ringing, his words long forgotten. Orest’s head snaps back painfully with the marksman precision between his forehead, slumping over into the body of the peggy. Blood splatters at your feet, watering your eyes from the gunpowder, the smoke. Three perfect shells rolling into the iron-like puddles as Jacob slips his handgun from your limp fingers, patting your shoulder and shaking your whole body with the movement.

Politely, you turn away from him and vomit on the floor on your hands and knees.

**Weak.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Your grip on his wrist is borderline painful, on the verge of snapping bone, the blood vessels breaking apart in his skin there. No visible pain flinches on his face but he remembers--remembers when you’d clutched at it earlier, this tiny little thing to which he could crush at a moment’s notice.
> 
> What is this, then?

**2 0 4 8 6 3--**

The chalk halts noisily against the board, migraine settling in as you clutch at the side of your head in the midst of another ruined calculation.

Pratt, who mistakenly appears like he’s dozing off, screeches the legs of his chair from standing up too fast. Squeezing at his hands as if he needs to be anchored, pacing around you like this loyal dog whom he can sense his master’s discomfort. The taller man hovers and floats around you, pacing back and forth almost as he asks if you’re alright.

“Do you… need any help?” he supplies as if he’s uncertain of how much _help_ he can be himself. Eyeing the board of the chemical bonds and formulas you’ve got strung up, weighing out your possibilities as you take another gulp of your water.

Courteous captor. Jacob’s given you a rather generous portion of rations instead of starving you out to see how many pounds you could shed under his training regimen. Despite this, you’re still under lockdown; security’s been tightened, some armed guard or personnel is with you at all times, and if you need anything it has to go through Jacob’s approval first.

The lab setup could be better--you much prefer a more _scrubbed_ setting that looks as if it’s been sanitized, and often, but hey. If the peggies don’t mind, you’re not one to complain about the tools given to you.

“No,” you say, even if Pratt continues to linger by your side. “Actually, yes.”

He literally _beams_ with the opportunity to be of use to you. This is not the Pratt you remember back on your first day on the job at the precinct. The Pratt you knew had literally dumped the coffee running duties on you first thing. Had made an unnecessarily crass joke about you being a war vet. Kept asking for you to reach for things on pointlessly high shelves that he _knew_ you couldn’t reach.

Now here he is, docile and waiting to be your perfect tool, hands folded in front of him, groveling for his dog treats.

Your fingers run against the notes other chemists have left behind. “Why did you tell him? About what I did before?”

Suddenly, all that need to become useful shrinks away, Pratt’s eyes turning away from you.

But you need an answer, _his_ answer as you reach for his shirt, fingers grasping him to you. “Staci, why did you tell him?”

He appears uncomfortable, twitchy as he feels it necessary to glance over his shoulder. Like Jacob is lurking, waiting at all times for his slip up. The shadow that overshadows. But you won’t let him go, even if you’re ridiculously shorter than him, grip like a vice.

The way he whispers it is enough to let you know he’s terrified. “Tried to get you out of there. He knows you’re ready. Found another purpose for you…”

_Saved you from the inevitable trigger pulling. Prolonged it, more like._

**Soft spot to exploit?**

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I tried--”

You shake your head, quelling that headache with another rub of your temple. Ignore as Pratt’s eyebrows furrow, asking if you’re alright, if there’s still anything he can do to help. Aspirin or medication for you to be comfortable. How the bruise around your neck matches the discoloration beneath his eye.

**He cares. So cute. Trying hard.**

**I should fuck him.**

“Do you… hear someone talking?” you finally ask him.

He pauses, listening. Only the murmur of the usual happenings here at the vet center, his eyes casting upwards in search for that alleged voice that ghosts these halls. In the end, Pratt shakes his head.

**I’m right here, babe.**

You press him for the aspirin, and he’s quick to leave to fetch it.

 

 

No number of pills can quell the dull ache. Doesn’t hurt to try though. Books line haphazardly around a corner of the room, mimicking the beer bottles and numerous ashtrays that find purchase on any available space.

Jacob’s book selection is intrinsically expectant, yet also a surprise to you. A few of these books you’ve seen hugging the shelves of fellow staff back when you’d been on active duty--psychological reports, research articles on functions of the brain. You wonder how long he has stayed fascinated, fixated on this if it’ll eat away at him, consume him much like how the brain does in order to survive.

The door clicks open, Jacob’s gaze meeting yours when he finds that you’re alone in his tac center, chaperone missing.

“I’ve tweaked the formula,” you inform him, arms crossed as you step away from his books, nodding over to a clean spot on his desk. “Take that to your chemists. They’ll see the results.”

He needs to pick up his jaw off the floor if he plans on speaking in any near future, eyes straying for anyone else supervising your visit.

You shrug. “Pratt went off to do his chores.”

Something about him seems more… tiresome than usual. His feet shuffling against the tiles, limbs a little slack. That holster braced against his thigh hugs that familiar red paint of his pistol, the handle of his knife there, too.

You look away, feeling queasy again, popping another pill.

What you don’t expect is for him to close the gap, slowly, as if measuring each of his steps based on the tiles. Facing him, watching him tower over you is another reminder that always seems to catch you off guard. How he has to angle his head downwards to even properly meet your gaze. The man has to say nothing and you’re already feeling unsafe, bottle of aspirin clutched against your chest.

**Damn…**

He lifts his hand and pries it away from your hold, shaking the bottle, hearing a few pills rattling inside. “How many have you taken, doc?”

“They’re small dosage,” you defend yourself, reaching for it just as he goes to pull away. A memory of Pratt doing something similar back in your shared office. “You can’t expect me to work with a migraine.”

**Stop being a pussy.**

“I can and I will,” comes his husky tone. The bottle settles with a final shake against the surface of the desk where your report lays. “I need you functioning. What good are you to me passed out, doc?”

_Does he really expect you to try and take the easy route? Give yourself a little credit, you’re willing to play his little game._

You hate that you have to tilt your head up just to see him, leaned back because he won’t take one for himself. “You didn’t seem to mind before.”

You don’t equate those mass killings as yours. That isn’t you. It could never be you. Whoever he’s cultivated, perfected, honed is a side you block out. The red curtain veiled from that side of your memory, dark shadows passing behind it during the slaughter.

Images of stocking-clad thighs, garter belts, a skimpy lingerie housed in black lace tempting behind that curtain after each blow. Your brows furrow, face unclear, wondering why this thought crosses your mind at all.

“I still don’t,” he responds, expression unreadable. Unphased by your accusations. “You don’t talk much then. Just one order and you’re mine.”

Something shivers icy cold down your spine, arms still crossed tightly beneath your breasts. As if that would protect you from his words, from him physically reaching between your ribcage to rip out your heart.

“Why don’t you do it then?” you whisper.

He eclipses the dim ceiling light with his entire frame. Backing you up into a wall you don’t realize is directly behind you, boots almost clumsy against the faded trimming. Blood pounding into your eardrums again as you’re face to face with his rabbit’s foot, the dog whistle, the rubber-edged dog tags. Feel your own hanging between your breasts beneath the collar of your sweater.

“Trust me,” he says, voice low. Meant only for you. Is it just you? “I much prefer it when she’s here. But that’s all she is, isn’t she? Right now, I don’t need a gun.”

**Fuck, right there.**

Your breath stills when he lifts his hand, tapping two fingers against the side of your skull. Smiles a little. You can see the stains in his shirt as your breath shakes.

“I need what’s in here. I can train you to be stronger, not smarter. Sometimes, doc, you don’t need brains to follow orders.”

That line of reasoning troubles you. Runs deeper than just this lunacy he’s backing for his brother, the alleged _Father_. You’d spoken with the brain surgeons and psychologists and therapists overseas, brief memories of a lunch after leaving the OR. When you hear Jacob’s words there’s an echo of unresolved trauma, the need to _logically reason_ and justify what he’s doing.

You’re not certified for this.

He wonders what’s pulling together in your skull. Wants to crack it open to see those synapses firing off like this colorful light show.

His fingertips barely touch your neck when your nails dig into the tough skin of his wrist again, startled. Afraid that he’ll crush your windpipe once more, and he knows this. But his other hand comes up, raising as to alert you like some wild animal that you are. Touching against your shoulder, edging upwards to your sweater’s collar.

Two fingers hook in, pulling back the fabric to unveil the ball chain around your neck beneath the purple bruise.

**Closer.**

Jacob lifts it beneath his fingers and yanks it free from your neck, the chain snapping as he regards the dog tags in the light, holding them like prized fruit from the vine.

Every fiber of your being is screaming at you, urging you to lunge forward and take back what’s yours. But you stay in your place, jaw working up a storm, clenching as your fingers curl and dig into your palms. He reads over the names, the blood type, pockets it without another word. 

You know how protocol works with these. So does he.

The scuffling of nervous feet entering the room and halting is enough for both of you to break eye contact, Jacob taking a step back when you both hear Pratt’s tense bumbling.

**Come back.**

You breathe in a gust of air you didn’t know you needed, studying the way Jacob returns back to where you’d left the report. Pratt is informing him of the latest developments since your little _fiasco_ earlier, and you hear snippets of _escaped_ and _still out there_ among them.

Those reports and new formulas slide off from the table, pressed to Pratt’s chest as he’s ordered to send that out to the Henbane to test.

And for you? Jacob returns, expressionless, opened music box resting in his palm.

Pratt’s face twists into a beautiful, pained expression as your vision of him blots out into redness.

 

 

It’s like one of those lucid dreams. The ones where you’re nothing but a backseat driver, knowing the consequences of what will happen but being powerless to stop it. Like those moments of sudden sleep paralysis, body numb but mind hyperalert, still conscious.

In your mind’s eye, you don’t feel like yourself. Can’t remember if you’re still in your body or sharing it with another. The issues you faced have always been one of the physical world--tumors, wounds, injuries of the material body. Prescribing medication needed to mitigate the pain.

Jacob is almost startled to find you standing at the balcony overlooking the courtyard, back facing him, cigarette wedged between your fingers against the railing. A cigarette from a pack he’s left out on a desk near another ashtray, his footsteps careful as he enters the room. A record from The Platters spinning on the player, _Smoke Gets In Your Eyes_.

You have your own assigned area, and the tac center isn’t it. It’s why Jacob searches for Pratt or anyone else who is _supposed_ to be on security detail for you, why he starts pondering why everyone is _slacking_ on their duties around here like he isn’t running it round-the-clock military.

It’s why the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end for some reason, like this walking ghost curling into the crevices of this room, watching you turn. Foggy, phantasmal smoke blowing through your nose like this awoken dragon.

“ **Jake** ,” is the first word out of your mouth.

It’s huskier. Buried beneath a depth he can’t seem to reach.

There’s blood on your sweater, twigs and dirt caught on loose, snagged threads. Scratches from the branches of the thick forests and shrubs. Bruise circling your neck like fresh paint. Strands of your hair falling apart from your bun. He can see the specks of red trailing down a cheek, those unblinking eyes. 

You don’t call him that. You’ve never called him that.

If anything, he’s never heard you address him by name at all.

“Is it done?” he asks. Doesn’t step further into the room. You notice it like a strike of lightning before rolling thunder.

Your head turns, angles, studying him as you’re the one who walks closer. Minimizes the gap. He wants to leave all of a sudden, but at the same time can’t. Like the desire to fully witness something that you shouldn’t, that dark knowing to satiate a curiosity.

“ **Who would I be if it wasn’t?** ” you pose, and he can smell the smoke now. “ **Did you expect anything less?** ”

There is a confidence here that exudes, is almost unfounded before. How can he ever feel afraid? You can’t clock in past five feet to his six-foot-four and yet here you stand, scrutinizing him, taking him apart like this building block down to its foundation.

“No,” he agrees, stock-still, even when he feels the soft warmth of cigarette smoke against his neck.

And you smile. The first one he’s ever seen in your weeks, months here, despite the many he’s given you. Cigarette hanging at your lips like this high school greaser. Stubbing it away into the ashtray on the desk beside you.

“ **Because you made me this way**.”

He doesn’t understand, he isn’t quite sure if he wants to begin to. His hand lifting, touching against the blood that smears and streaks against your chin. The way you shiver as he goes to wipe it away, but you only tuck your face against that rough palm.

The need to suddenly withdraw, to yank his hand back is too late. Your grip on his wrist is borderline painful, on the verge of snapping bone, the blood vessels breaking apart in his skin there. No visible pain flinches on his face but he remembers--remembers when you’d clutched at it earlier, this tiny little thing to which he could crush at a moment’s notice.

What is this, then? The way his blood cools, rushes like this numbing, buzzing sensation as your tight grip serves as a tourniquet.

He hears the record skip--the almost too-loud, flinching introduction of that song he’s made use of, dedicated to you now running on the player.

Nothing about you changes, not even when _only you can make the darkness bright_ comes softly echoing through one ear and out the other. No wary flinching from you, that triggering disposition as you usually do--a heap on the floor, that migraine coming to life full force, tears in your eyes before you become that perfect, well-crafted tool for him.

Nothing happens, your grip still painfully tight, his fingers tingling numb now as you guide them to your hip.

“ _ **Only you, and you alone**_ ,” you hum along against those grainy, scarlet lights of the darkness, rocking against him. _Dancing_ against him in that filtered glow as your other hand fits into his. “ _ **Can thrill me like you do…**_ ”

It dawns on him then, his boots shuffling in time with yours as you rock against him, what this is. At least Jacob has some inkling, some fragment of an idea of what this is supposed to be, what he’s created.

The way your hand slips down his hip, curling like this spider against his thigh holster. Guarding it safe, switching the safety of his handgun on. A warning. Cheek pressed against his sternum, feeling the movement of his head tilting downwards. There is something lurking in the water, too dark to see, ripples of its movements against his reflection and coming closer.

You are no sacrificial lamb. You are no fawn for which his teeth can sink into, tear apart its flesh with blood-caked fangs. You are a wolf bearing sheepskin under his spell, the predator for which he has become the prey at any slight or movement. A monster under the guise of a tiny vessel, the same body in which those tears came forth because you hadn’t been strong enough to pull the trigger.

When Jacob’s hands relax, giving into you, only then do you seem even a fraction pleased.

 

 

The next afternoon, Jacob seems more standoffish than usual.

Whatever. You always figured him to be a lone wolf at heart. Not like you need him breathing over your shoulder as you stick another sample slide beneath your microscope, readjusting the zoom as you hover over your new equipment. Pratt had gone off to secure you a lunch in the mess hall line, which generally gets busy at this time of day.

A knock comes at the opened door to your “lab,” which was probably something the previous room’s functions were similarly used to. You don’t turn around immediately when the visitor steps in, hovering around the doorway.

Usually only Pratt has the common courtesy of doing such a thing, so when you turn and see Jacob standing there, you don’t bother to hide your disappointment.

“Oh.” You’re about to turn back to your work when you notice something… off about him. He usually keeps to himself. Let him stew in his own thoughts. You’ve got your own to worry about, fixing up something new under his radar for the Grand View. “Need something?”

A cigarette pack rests in his breast pocket, an unlit one between his fingers as he seems to ponder something. About you, about the room, about your state of dress--you really need a lab coat or something around here. How are you supposed to be distinguishable to some of these peggies when they’ve been walking around _air bombarding you_ at some point in this forsaken county?

“Just checking in,” is his response. Gauging you for a moment as he appears to wonder about something you don’t know about.

He’s usually more talkative than this, reminiscent of some old coop who won’t let you leave because he has something more to add to his timeless story.

You shrug. “Everything’s fine. Maybe you can tell your staff to stop walking into here every five minutes because it’s not a lounge? I can’t concentrate with all that running in and out.”

You expect him to bitch and moan at you about that, but surprisingly he’s amiable. “I’ll let them know.”

Another wary shrug, almost awkward. Almost _cute_ in that new sweater you have on today. “Thanks? Is there… something else you wanna talk about or can I get back to work?”

The first chance he can get, he takes it. The curious look crossing his expression, thumb rubbing softly, agitating against the filter of the cigarette. “You remember anything? From last night?”

His veins feel like ice when you shoot him a strange look, offering, “About what?”

Nothing about you is overly sweet today, the bruise on his wrist clear, matching the prints around your neck like a lace choker. You don’t take much notice of it, really--his arms are scarred enough. Nor do you take any closer steps to him, scrutinize him with such deliberate intensity.

Your head tilts, hands stuffed in your pockets as you suddenly seem sheepish. “Can I get one?”

It takes Jacob a moment to glance down at the packet in his pocket, fresh and missing the one from last night.

He still seems wary. “Didn’t seem to mind asking me earlier.”

Another odd expression. His heart is pounding faster each second. “I’m sorry, but… when did I ask you?”

What are you playing at? Why is he so hung up over this?

“Nothing. Never mind.”

He hands you off the one that’s already in his hand, helping you to light it as you step closer within reasonable distance of him. That dull, orange glow of the match gracing your cheeks, flickering almost neon pink in this fire, as you puff out a breath of smoke to smother it out. Classy. Sophisticated.

Something about him feels a little more fidgety, unusual than before as you survey him when you can feel those eyes scrutinizing for too long. His fingers rubbing against a painful looking rash near his elbow.

You don’t flinch, you don’t cringe, something that almost catches him off guard. Why should it? You’ve seen plenty worse on an operating table, with NCOs and officers alike coming in with about the dumbest ailments out there. You know how many _it hurts to piss_ stories you’ve got going in the doctor’s office during your tenure?

“You should get that checked out,” is your ironic advice. Suck in a breath of smoke, breezing it out through your lips like a whistle.

Advice that seems ill-met when he shoots you a look, to which you defend, “What? I’m a _doctor_ , do you think I haven’t seen something like that before? It’s only going to get worse.”

“I’m _fine_.” He says it the way you expect him to--hard, almost offended, like he doesn’t need your help. Wouldn’t be the first person to do so.

You shrug. “Suit yourself. You and half the people around here seriously need physicals going around, though. And basic hygiene. I think I’m the only person who showers regularly.”

Aren’t you supposed to be more miffed about the fact that you’re still captive under him? Just because he’s given you more play space and holding you at gunpoint to do what the other _scientists_ here can’t under less time should have induced stress beyond your years. Maybe, like him, you’re just jaded to it all--have seen it all, have seen too much.

He feels that you were lying then, watching that almost weary, smoke-filled gaze you send off to a corner of the room.

He doesn’t comment on it, abandoning the room as you’re left smoking alone in your cultured thoughts.

Karma must really want to bite him in the ass, because for the next two weeks those rashes are borderline _irritating_ him to death. He can barely sleep as is, tossing and turning and waking up in the middle of the night to scratch like a man possessed at his arms. 

There comes a point where it really is too much--Jacob’s drawing blood against his fingernails, breaking skin from the overt abuse and neglect of his care and personal welfare. And he really can’t work like this, can’t steady his aim properly even as he tries to self-help and diagnose himself. There’s only so much basic lotions and ointments can mitigate it before it really needs proper treatment. Something he seems unfamiliar with--this man who has never had proper help at all, where every system has failed him over and over again in his time of need.

Well. We all take baby steps somewhere. 

Finally, after endless hours of pacing and debating, Jacob shows up at your lab again, arms an absolute mess in the face of you.

This time, your cheeky look is far more welcoming than he last remembered as you swivel around from your drafting stool. Pen in hand, notes abandoned as you work on another breakthrough to improve the dosage and formula for his little game.

You wave around a little prescription-like note, scrawled in the penmanship of a true doctor. Unreadable, illegible, but like this decoded message only viable between physician and pharmacist.

“Here,” you offer him, saying nothing more on the matter. “You’re welcome.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every night, Pratt always asks if you need his help. Every night, you tell him the same answer.
> 
> Tonight is not one of those nights.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me @ y'all who wanted this to be jacob/rook/pratt: surprise motherfuckers!!!

Pratt is not the only one suddenly scrambling off his chair when you bolt up from the cot in a cold sweat.

Eyes almost wild, unraveled as you breathe in deep. Gathering your bearings as the blankets fall away, searching your surroundings. It’s as if you can already feel that dry dust sweeping into your eyes, clutching at the support as Pratt comes into view of your harrowed, intimate experience that he can only begin to imagine.

But you’re his foremost concern--his main priority, voice as taut and thin as a wire on the verge of snapping in the dead of night. 

“You alright?” 

He reaches to touch you, an action meant to comfort, but the movement is too quick for your liking. Pratt sees that visible _flinch_ you give him, sweat damp on your brow and forehead before he wizens up and shows you his palm in a display of pacification. Like that feral animal again. The idea that you’ll lunge out at him with teeth at the ready.

He lingers, drifts again, a nervous wreck that this new position has given him. Face still dirty, bruise fading, this towering mess of a man as he awaits patiently for you, implores you for anything that he can be of assistance.

“No,” you whisper, glancing over at the boarded window. No light seeps through the cracks yet. “Not now.”

Something about him seems disappointed. As if he isn’t stacking up to an expectation, isn’t being as useful or purposeful as he’s made out to be.

For the first time, he speaks out something different. Voice quiet, like he might be heard through the walls. “Nightmares?”

**Always.**

“Sometimes,” you reply, waving away the glass of water he tries to ply you with. Migraine singing, body overheating in this mess.

In the soft lamplight you can see his expression shift, setting the glass on the end table. “So does he.”

**Jake.**

That look that morphs across your face, that wry amusement that crosses you catches Pratt off guard as you nestle back into your pillow.

“You come to his bedside with warm milk, too?”

 _Embarrassment_. “If he asks.” 

Then with a more softer urgency, “Go to sleep.”

Jacob is less than kind to those who sleep on the job. Yet Pratt doesn’t urge what your dreams are about, what startles you awake at times. You feel that maybe he does but knows better than to press. If he knows that Jacob gets the same way, you have a feeling Pratt doesn’t have to imagine much about what.

Your hand shoots out, tugging against the paracord bracelet around Pratt’s wrist from where you lay. He pauses so abruptly that you’re almost fearful _he’s_ the feral one around here and not you, his gaze full of question.

“Can you sit closer?” you murmur, eyeing the chair he’s got situated by the locked door. “I sleep better when I’ve got someone nearby.”

**Still scared? Of what? The monsters in the closet?**

You feel the need to explain yourself for some reason as Pratt eyes where your fingers are still wrapped around his wrist. “I just do, it’s been like this since…”

**Since your royal fuck-up overseas?**

_Stop it._

Pratt says nothing more as you taper off, scooting his chair over to your bedside.

He lets you take his hand again when you reach for it.

 

 

It’s barely coming into lunch hour when you hear the familiar wailing of your name being called into the courtyard.

Some peggies have caught wind about your new position, questions about ailments and simple cures that were easily remedied. You find it strange, frankly, that they would come to you so effortlessly after everything this cult has done to see you strung up to a lamppost.

You can’t really argue this time, bun frazzled and stray locks coming into your eyes, when the issue at hand is one of Jacob’s judges lying on her side, docile, breathing quickly as a group of hunters standby in a perimeter around her.

You shove and elbow a few people a little more harshly than needed to get through as you hear murmurs of _what do we do?_ and _what’s wrong with her?_ and _she’s one of Jacob’s favorites, he’s gonna be **pissed**._

One look as you crouch at her side and eye her heavy belly is all you need to know.

Your fingers gently touch against the unruly, matted fur on her neck. “She’s pregnant, about to go into labor. How did you guys _not_ realize she was knocked up?”

Many sheepish eyes turn away from your accusation with poor excuses like _well, I thought she was just eating a lot of people recently_ or _maybe she just made mad gains._

“Unbelievable,” you can’t help but answer back.

“Well, you’re a vet, right?” one of the peggies asks you.

You nod, urging the judge softly to calm down and relax.

“So, like, you can help her, right? You’ve done this before if you do this all the time!”

Add another to the list of _how many of these peggies actually have a GED to join the cult_ questions you need to ask Jacob stat, shooting that peggy a glare. “I’m a _veteran_ , not a _veterinarian_ , you fuck. Now stop wasting your breath and get me some fucking towels, gloves, warm water, some boxes, cardboard, _anything_.”

It’s too late to move her--she’s already well on her way, whining, distressed, even as the materials are hastily provided to you. Of all the things this cult needs you to do, it’s everything you’re _not_ trained in. It can’t be completely different than what your OB-GYN colleagues have been touting, right? Right?

With a lot of urging from Pratt to thin out the curious crowd at your behest ( _“She’s stressed, you’ve all been stressing her out, move the fuck **over!** ”_) and what must be literal hours of delivery, you finally watch as the mother judge laps away at the sacs and nips at the umbilical cords, allowing her puppies to properly breathe. She is exhausted though--you don’t rightly blame her, her head tucked against your lap, your latex gloves dotted with blood from the delivery.

From the opened balcony of the vet center, you finally notice Jacob standing at the rail like some immovable statue, gazing down upon you. Expressionless, almost borderline full of wonder as the puppies are curled near her belly.

How long has he been standing there? Why was he not down for this if this wolf was his _favorite?_ You motion for him to come and see, and after a moment, a blink, he moves away from the rail and disappears.

If the wolf is his favorite, then clearly Jacob is _hers_. Despite the arduous finality of it all, she can’t help but sit her head up in your lap when his boots crunch against the dirt. Snapping off your gloves, you run your fingers through the fur of her neck before rising to meet Jacob, who all but towers over the litter.

“Will she make it?” is his first question, voice almost softer than usual.

You nod, watching as she licks against a pup’s face. “Yeah. No complications. There… is an issue, though.”

His face turns fully to you, still streaked with dirt and scars.

You feel smaller as you eye the pup all the way at the end, abandoned and left weeping on its own. “There’s a runt.”

There is no mistaking that somber, almost anxious expression you hold. Not because of the fact that the runt exists, but because you know what this both means for it. The laws of nature take years to evolve. This is just one of those things that must be, that are just the game of survival. And if Jacob’s still touting the wrong kind of Darwinism, you don’t want to be the one to do it.

Instead, his rumbling voice startles you as he studies your face. “What do you want me to do?”

Your hands wring together, thinking steps ahead. This is the first _choice_ he’s given you. Not to spite you, not to test you. It’s quite telling, reflective of a man on how he treats animals.

“Keep it,” you suggest. “Raise it. It may not be one of her own, but it’s one of _yours_. With the right training, the right care, there’s no such thing.”

You had to tear the sac open yourself, tie off the umbilical cord because the mother wouldn’t do it. Maybe its best you keep the runt here for now, wait until the runt's been properly weaned and can see. You sense it won’t be accepted for long, watching as Jacob crouches before the crying thing, cupping it into the palms of his hands.

When he holds it there is something perceptively softer, more careful about him. How his thumb brushes against the tiny nose as it wriggles softly, wailing. Those eyes of his studying something far beyond your reach, but imaginable nonetheless. Maybe he’s thinking about his baby brother, the child of the pack, the alleged runt of the litter.

Maybe he sees how that child had morphed into something more, something Jacob could be around for this time.

“Get back inside,” Jacob orders you, not harshly, not with force as he usually does. “Get yourself cleaned up, doc. And keep working on that Grand View formula.”

You seem to forget Pratt is always hovering over you, his hand reaching to touch the small of your back, guiding you away from Jacob and his new recruits. 

The migraine quells until the next morning.

 

 

There are renovations going on in your lab a few weeks later.

Jacob had asked for a requisition form--anything that you needed in order to accommodate, and surprisingly it must be the _only_ sterile and most welcoming, well-lit room in this entire base of operations. Well. Not _every_ peggy who comes in complaining about having the clap isn’t bringing in mud tracks either, but you make do.

The last person on your mind to ever step foot in your new setup, however, is one you haven’t seen since the beginning of this all. Hands in his pockets, aviators fixed to the top of his perfectly groomed hair, surveying the sparkling new equipment and patient exam tables.

Your cup of coffee almost spills onto your sweater as he’s fixated on you when you enter through the doorway.

“John Seed,” is all you say.

**You thought _I_ was a bitch? Check this guy out.**

“Deputy,” is his dry, drawn-out, and peculiar reply. “Or is it _doctor_ , now?”

You sip at your beverage, wondering what the fuck a lawyer is doing in your playing field. “Has been.”

He nods, slow and non-appreciatively, pacing with as much interest against the stark new equipment as he’s intending to give. “You certainly dropped off your surgeon pay-grade, I’ll tell you that.”

_So he did read the files._

**No shit he did. Look at him. I bet he spends three hours on his skincare routine at night. Times himself to jack off when he can be done to scrub off his face mask.**

You clear your throat, gauging how far projectile coffee can hit his face from this range. “I had my reasons.”

He smiles, something perfect, immaculate. _Fake_. “So did I.”

**Bitch, let me at him. Let me _deck_ this kid straight to the fucking ground.**

_Calm down._

“I don’t have files laying around just waiting for me to eat up that story, do I?”

“No.” John touches one of the scales pressed up against the far wall, tilting it to watch as it steers to seamless balance. “I expected you to be more grateful, doctor. Renovating and purchasing this equipment was an expense not taken lightly and came out of _my_ pocket.”

**Oooh. Cry Baby Seed.**

You shrug with about as much interest as he has with the fact that he has to speak to you. “Jacob doesn’t tell me these things.”

“Well, a _thank you_ would be a nice start.”

“How about a _fuck you?_ ”

He gives you ones of those looks you’re all too familiar with. The _I’m actually really offended you would say that to me_ look as you’re both ready to go at each other’s throats again when Jacob steps into the immaculate tiles of the room.

“Play nice,” comes his almost warning, amused tone. “John. C’mere.”

Standing on the sideline, watching as the two brothers hug each other is enough to get you looking politely the other way. That almost childish, tender affection that you couldn’t rightly equate to yet longed for. They both part, Jacob clearly the eldest, the most physically imposing between the two, yet John seems unphased by that.

“I need to head out,” John informs him. “We’ve boarded up Fall’s End. I need to check in the commodities of the bunker after collecting that stock.”

It’s the most news you’ve heard of the outside since your prolonged captivity here, shifting your weight between your feet.

“Doctor,” John waves over your way, needing to assert to you his departure.

**Flip ‘em off.**

You wave back, narrowing your eyes. “Bye, John.”

Alone, now, you stand with Jacob, and in this renovated room with proper electricity, he seems different. They say lighting changes how we can perceive a person, their emotions--how the light plays off their face, turns them into a different being altogether. You feel you’re witnessing that right now, those dirty streaks still stark and unkempt on Jacob’s body, yet he is visibly _clear_ to you now.

The red in his hair is even more prominent here as he goes to seat himself on a patient exam table.

**Look at him. Living in every fantasy of this patient-doctor porno.**

_Quiet._

“How do you like the new digs?” comes his almost lazy tone, long legs of his swinging gently back and forth. You can imagine him doing the same thing at the edge of a river, taking in the morning sun. 

You stuff your hands into your pockets, glancing at the equipment brands, the new smell, the _cleanliness_ of it all. “Only one way to really find out.”

**Fuck me. On the table.**

_No._

You keep reminding yourself that this isn’t being done as a service of charity. You’re still a captive, _Jacob’s_ captive. He’s only being amiable right now because _you’re_ playing ball with him, walking in each step of the way, being true to your every tweak of the formula. 

It still doesn’t change the fact that you appear almost stunned that he tells you to check on his arms.

A few bandages have secured the superficial bleeding from earlier annoyances and irritation, but otherwise you haven’t paid them any mind since he’d asked for your help. You’ve learned better than to press on. Let him come in when he wants to, when he’s prepared to ask for help.

Carefully, you yank out a pair of latex gloves from the counter and snap them on, Jacob waiting patiently where he remains. The prescription you’ve given him has done well considerably; aside from the scars that remain, the rashes seemed to have completely almost disappeared.

“Looks good,” you tell him, genuinely pleased as you remove some of the bandages. The scabs will fall away on their own. “Keep this up and it’ll be gone before you know it. Sleep any better so far?”

He nods, still a dirty mess in front of you, something you have to comment on. “I don’t have to remind you to _shower_ , do I?”

“I distinctly remember you always complaining of it,” is all he smartly can say.

You make a face. “Well, please _do_ act on it. If you’re gonna make me run this place like a doctor’s office, you better come in with more common sense than _that_.”

“Alright,” he says after another moment, glancing up at the ceiling lights, toying over your words. “And where do you want to begin?”

“Physicals. Records. Documentation. Easier to take care of everyone under one roof.”

The first patient who gets this luxury is Jacob, and the bar is set _very_ high.

Even without his boots, stepping onto the scale as you adjust and balance it, he’s _enormous_. You had to make _him_ readjust the height of the scale even as you went to grab for a chair because you just couldn’t clock it out high enough to touch his head. Despite appearances, much to your surprise, everything about him physically seems relatively stable.

**Six-foot-four. Two hundred-twenty pounds. All pure man meat that could be rawing me.**

It’s when your hand reaches with stethoscope in palm towards the hem of his shirt does he apply pressure.

Your hand ceases, not on its own, but by his own finger wrapped around your wrist.

**Fucked up, sister.**

But something about him is airy. _Playful_ , even as his grip is not meant to bruise or harm you, but to calmly give you a forewarning. “It’s cold, doc.”

**Huh?**

Jacob Seed, the pinnacle of Hope County’s top of the food chain, who probably can and will eat your heart out in a moment’s notice, afraid of an icy cold stethoscope touching his pecs.

You must be living in a different universe as your breath stills when his grip finally slips away, confirming, “I’ll be gentle. Don’t worry.”

You are. Though he sucks in a breath from that tiny chill, you check his breathing, his heartrate, other necessary information that needs to be documented for later use in the event of any future happenings. You don’t notice the way his eyes almost doze off when you check his breathing from his back, his shirt riding up, revealing to you some scars, freckles, a softness against his belly that he seems quick to yank his shirt back down for.

Finally, you ask him something that seems to put him off.

“Age?” 

He doesn’t respond right away, which you notice, but wait for nonetheless.

“Forty-seven.”

**Holy shit.**

You don’t seem phased by that, clearing the last of his documents. Still sensing his almost borderline displeasure from having to reveal that. 

“Forty-seven, huh?” you comment. “You look really good for a man in his late forties. Still in shape. BMI’s in range. Not many men in your age group look half as good as you do.”

Some people need an extra boost, a regain in confidence. John definitely doesn’t need it. You feel as if the eldest brother may be sidelined, a secondary pick if stood side-by-side with the immaculate baby. And, well. You’re only giving him the straight facts that you know.

**Yeah. Grease him up, babe. You think his cock’s any true to that height he’s boasting?**

Your indirect compliment sincerely seems to be the last thing he was expecting as he finally steps off the table, clearing his throat as you give him your back. Trying to cool yourself, your face, keeping yourself occupied with the sample slides left on the counter.

**Flirting? With your captor? You _are_ a slut.**

Jacob seems to linger for an unnecessarily long time, at least to you, before he’s thankfully making his way back down the hall to his room.

 

 

The following nights haven’t gotten any easier.

If anything, you feel guilty for giving Pratt a heart attack every time those night terrors occur. Maybe he finally expects you to snap one day, but the man has the patience of a saint. Something you could hardly find yourself associating with him for quite some time, his chair now always situated at your bedside. 

You wonder if he’s only startled because he’s dozing off too. Trusts you enough to let his guard down like you’re not going to jab a scalpel through his throat in the middle of his slumber.

But he’s the only real _acquaintance_ you have here. And maybe he feels the same way about you, that familiar anchor to keep him rooted so he doesn’t forget who he is at times. You both seem to have lost your way through Jacob’s labyrinth, the mind games, the round-the-clock military lifestyle again.

Every night, Pratt always asks if you need his help. Every night, you tell him the same answer.

Tonight is not one of those nights.

You’re seated on the edge of the cot, forehead damp, skin both simultaneously hot and cool from the breeze slipping in. Your body trembling like you’ve got a fever, Pratt standing before you as you try to keep your head together. Feeling useless again, like he can’t be of assistance anymore. Everything about this place is just a mindfuck, an impossibility he can’t physically help you with.

Your skin tingling, itchy, your body and mind stressed beyond belief. Every basic remedy you know of hasn’t given you the privacy to attend to those matters.

You eye Pratt’s boots, the length of his slacks. Reach his belt which is just above your eye level here and swallow softly, rising to stand.

“I need your help,” you whisper to him. The floorboards creaking, the wind whistling. “Can do you that for me, Staci? Please?”

He is so eager to be of use. So ready. So pliant.

**Give in. Do it.**

**You know you want to.**

“What would you do for me?” you ask him, voice almost hoarse as you take in your height difference. He’s almost as tall as Jacob, but nearly half his age. “What can’t you do for me?”

“Anything,” is his ready response. Not rehearsed. You would know if it was. “I-I mean aside from, y’know, _escaping_ \--”

He rambles, heedlessly needs to explain further just as you reach down for his hand with the paracord. Nothing unusual. He’s grown accustomed to your nightly hand-holding, just the need to… _touch_ someone else. To be familiar with those palms as his voice passes through your ears like white noise, faded, as you guide his palm to face you, slipping it beneath the waistband of your shorts.

Pratt’s voice dies, his throat drying up. Feels the thin fabric of your underwear slipping past his fingers as you step closer, a foot between his. Your other hand bracing against his shoulder for leverage, his body stiff and still.

He meets your eyes, his palm large, warm, aching against you. Uncertain. Afraid of being caught. But not disagreeing.

Gently, you guide his forefinger between your folds, breath catching, Pratt swallowing. Standing on your tip-toes as you lean into him, the expanse of his palm rubbing teasing, rough warmth into your clit. Grinding into it as he sets an unsure pace, dipping into you with shallow strokes. His other hand resting against your hip as you let out a sigh.

He can feel how wet you’re soaking his hand, the heat between your thighs. The way he tests you here, plunges in deeper, trying to stay in place as you grind against him when he hits a particular spot. His even breaths trying to keep in check as you lose yours, gasping against his chest. Wondering if someone else can hear you through these paper-thin walls.

Your hand is still there, feeling every muscle, every movement of that finger fucking you. Whispering to him, guiding his middle: “Another.”

Your hand slips away, bracing against the back of his neck. Feeling how tight you’re gripping onto his fingers as they plunge into your pussy, Pratt worrying his bottom lip between hard teeth. Hearing that wet sound of his fingers sliding in and out, leaving you delirious, hazy. Grip on his neck, his shoulder like a vice. His fingers scissoring, stretching you curiously, your moan muffled into the chest of his shirt.

Pressing his fingers towards him, feeling that velvety softness of your walls. Your toes straining against his height as you urge him to go faster, grinding his palm in harder. They’re just the right thickness, squeezing them, soaking them as Pratt finally feels you seizing around him. Licking his lips as he tries to soothe his parched mouth, feeling your quick, hard gasps puffing against his neck.

You feel boneless, weightless as you slump against Pratt. His hold on you secure, solid against his body as his fingers glide in and out of you despite your orgasm, feeding you those lasting bits of its pleasure. It feels like minutes when he finally pulls his fingers free, your eyes half-lidded as his hold braced on you keeps you upright.

It's the first time you both make eye contact, his fingers soaked, those dark eyes nearly black. The distinct press of the front of his slacks against your belly, prodding, aching, needing after that sudden encounter.

Your mind is pacing miles ahead of you, fingers reaching between you both as you start unclasping his belt buckle. “Let me return the favor. Let me--”

“No.” He shakes his head, holds your hands in his to stop you from going any further. “It’s not--it’s not that I don’t want to, I _want_ to, I--”

He halts. Realizes his voice is bouncing off the walls like they’re bound to whisper them to the neighbors. To Jacob. To someone else who might tell, though why it matters is no concern of yours.

His buckle slips apart, but his hold grows firmer. If he leans down any further you can reach up to touch those parted lips, that exhausted, weary face of his.

“No,” he says again, straining against his slacks despite this. “This was about you. I can’t be selfish, this--this is all for you. Don’t worry about me.”

At long last, you nod. Allow him to guide you downwards into the cot, your thighs still trembling, but not for reasons of nightmares or buried pasts. For one night, at least, he wants to make you feel good. Do your bidding without cause or complaint.

Pratt waits until your eyes are shut, your breathing evened and slowed before he slips out of the room to wash his hands.


End file.
